


First Encounters

by SkyboxZoo



Category: DreamSMP, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Gen, Shadow People AU, and gets a horse stolen from them, someone steals a horse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26206342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyboxZoo/pseuds/SkyboxZoo
Summary: The vibes from the update notification were weird as hell. There weren’t many other patch notes beside a few bug fixes and Herobrine getting removed again. In the message, it had said that new mobs were a way to renew resources that normally would be non-renewable.Dream brushed off the weird energy of the update notice, and stepped inside the so called Shadow Temple.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & Sapnap & GeorgeNotFound
Comments: 3
Kudos: 59





	First Encounters

**Author's Note:**

> WHOAH
> 
> The idea for this au was originally created by mine-sara-sp on tumblr, and the DreamSMP au of the au was created by wooshofficial on tumblr, so you should go check those cool people out!
> 
> Now, on with the show!

Dream checked his communicator one last time before stepping into the temple. All of his friends were busy doing other things, and everyone from L’manberg was apparently off looking for their own copy of the building he stood in front of.

When the server updated, everyone had received an alert of the new structure that generated, and the new shadow mob that came with it. The update page was scarce, simply informing the players that the shadows could be summoned with an armor stand in one of the temples, and would be, “a shadow of the player that summoned it.”

The vibes from the update notification were weird as hell. There weren’t many other patch notes beside a few bug fixes and Herobrine getting removed again. In the message, it had said that shadows were a way to renew resources that normally would be non-renewable.

Dream brushed off the weird vibes of the update notice. He stepped inside. The armored man took a moment to admire the decorations of the so-called temple. For being a fairly small structure in a warm biome, it seemed very cold and uninviting. 

The main attraction seemed to be a raised, circular platform in the back of the structure. Dream pulled an armor stand out of his hotbar. The only light in the room came from the sun outside, along with a few scant light sourced by the entrance, causing Dream’s outline to stand out against the floor and the back wall of the temple. 

He set the armor stand down on the center of the dais and took a step back. The armor stand glowed for a second, before entirely vanishing. Looking down, the fighter watched as the shadow below him began to move. 

The darkness roiled for a moment, before an armored hand broke the surface, and pulled itself to its feet. A copy of Dream pulled itself out of the silhouette. It was wearing full nephrite armor with an enchanted sword in hand. Yellow particles danced around the gray entity. 

The communicator pocket vibrated in Dream’s pocket, indicating that it had a new message. He ignored it, instead keeping both eyes on the entity in front of him. The mob blinked. Then, it swung its sword, and Dream danced out of its reach, preparing for a fight. 

There wasn’t really one.

He easily stayed out of the shadow’s reach as it tried to attack him. It was exactly like fighting a single zombie. Eventually, Dream whittled down its health, and the entity dropped an exact copy of everything in Dream’s inventory. 

The man paused for a moment, because breaking into shocked laughter and digging through the pile sitting on the floor. That was the easiest fight in the world! And he got an entire set of netherite armor and tools from it. Even the durabilities between the sets of armor were identical. 

This time, Dream made sure to dump anything that was unnecessary from his inventory on the jungle floor outside of the temple. His inventory was going to get cluttered very quickly. 

He paused for a moment, remembering that his communicator had buzzed when he’d summoned his shadow. 

**Dream has summoned their shadow!**

**< TommyInnit> oh come on!!**

**< TommyInnit> WE JUST FOUND ONE**

**Dream’s shadow has been slain by Dream.**

**< Sapnap> is it going to say that every time?**

Dream quickly typed out a response.

**< Dream> lets find out**

The fighter loaded his crossbow and walked back towards the dais. He set another armor stand on the platform. Just like before, the shadow at Dream’s feet began moving before something climbed out of it. 

Dream immediately shot it with his crossbow and began hacking away at the mob’s health.

The shadow flinched at the impact of the bolt, and made an aborted movement to grab at the arrow lodged in its shoulder. The motion was forgotten as the entity moved to the side to doge Dream’s next assault. Its attacks were much faster this time, and Dream couldn’t just back up and stay out of its reach.

By the time he killed it, the fighter was at about half health.

Okay, so it got more difficult each time you killed it. That was interesting. He checked his communicator again, and a message did appear every time a shadow was summoned or killed.

Dream waited until he regened his health before loading his crossbow and summoning his shadow again. As soon as the shade under his feet started moving, Dream equipped his shield. 

The shadow didn’t appear with it equipped, and it was easily killed. It tried to get behind him a few times, but Dream killed it before it could do any real damage. 

He walked outside again and stood, watching the setting sun for a moment. Then, he got to work. He cut down a nearby tree using it to make a crafting table and a few chests. Dream now had eight sets of netherite armor, along with several copies of his various tools and weapons. They couldn’t all fit in his inventory, so some were still sitting on the floor of the temple. He put most of the items in the chest and tossed a few non-important things that had also duplicated into the foliage of the jungle.

At this point, the fighter was being greedy, but he’d never seen this much netherite before, and he wasn’t about to let this opportunity go to waste. Dream piled as much of the precious materials as he could hold into his inventory, and summoned his shadow for the fourth time.

Again, he set down the armor stand without the shield, but equipped it as soon hostile mob began forming. The monster appeared without a shield on its arm, but quickly equipped it mimicking its summoner. Dream backed up to the entrance of the temple, caging the thing inside the darkened building. He shot it until it was dead. His piercing crossbow broke through its shield easily. 

Dream glanced at all the armor on the floor, before moving to place what he was carrying in the chest and collecting the rest off the ground where the shadow had been cowering in the corner. He repeated this a few more times, with no new reaction from the shadow. When the third double chest was about half full, the fighter began to get nervous. There had to be more to the update than this. The mob had acted the same the last six times it had been killed.

He placed the armor stand down, and was treated with a crossbow bolt to the shoulder even before the entity had even fully emerged from his shadow. An axe cracked through the wood of his shield as the shadow shoved him to the side. Dream fell on his ass.

The shadow shot past him into the sunlight. It reloaded the crossbow and shot its summoner one more time before fully committing to sprinting through the jungle foliage.

In shock, the fighter watched his copy run into the jungle. He then scrambled to his feet and made chase. 

Whatever part of the code that decided which aspects of the players that the shadows received, this one had gotten the best of Dream's parkour skills. It slowly gained a lead from the fighter, as Dream struggled to make it over foliage that the shadow cleared smoothly.

Suddenly, the mob dipped out of Dream's sight. He skidded to a stop at the edge of a massive ravine. The shadow paused at the bottom for a moment, before bolting into one of the caves intersecting the gouge in the world. 

Dream steeled himself. Then he leaped into the depths after his shadow. The enchanted netherite boots absorbed most of the impact, but the fall still took him down to half health.

He hurried down the same tunnel and was immediately struck by the issue that he didn’t have any light. The warrior had tossed out all of his torches when his inventory started to get cluttered, but the enchanted shimmer of the shadow’s armor and the yellow particles that hovered around it led Dream farther and farther into the cavern. 

The fighter lost precious ground to the entity every time he had to slow to eat or a hostile mob blocked his path. The aggressive entities ignored the shadow as it sprinted past them, but turned to attack Dream every time he rounded a new corner. 

Dream skidded to a stop in a circular room of the cavern. He’d lost sight of the mob around the sharp turns and intersecting caves systems. Huffing, he quickly glanced down all of the pathways, but silently admitted defeat when he spied no glowing particles or enchanted armor in sight. 

He had no way to track down the escaped shadow. Pulling out a pickaxe, Dream dug a staircase to the surface. He broke into sunlight after several minutes and climbed out of the hole in the savanna surface. The jungle was visible in the distance. He sighed and headed towards the forested biome. 

It took Dream nearly an hour to find the shadow temple again. The dark structure was squirreled away in a cliff face. He only found it again because of the chests he’d left by the entrance. Nothing in the chests had been touched or moved at all. Pulling out his communicator, Dream noted down the coordinates. 

It looked like the citizens of L’manburg had been having their own adventures with shadows. Both Wilbur and Tubbo had been killed by Wilbur’s shadow and Tommy’s shadow had been killed and resummoned a few times. Shrugging to himself, Dream stuck his communicator back in his pocket and began the long trek towards the spawn town. 

* * *

“I still think you’re messing with us. There’s no way you got this much crap in a few hours.” Sapnap nagged from the back of his mule. “Is this structure a dungeon or something?”

“You’ll have to wait and see.” Dream was sitting backwards on his horse, while the steed continued forward without prompting. He’d practically had to beg his friend’s to get them moving as soon as he got back to spawn. He didn’t want anyone from L’manburg to follow him to the jungle and steal his look.

George and Sapnap trailed behind Dream on a donkey and mule accordingly. George was also leading a caravan of llamas that they had found on the journey to the jungle. 

“Why can’t you lead the llamas, Dream?” George’s donkey plodded along at the back of the train with the llamas trailing after him. 

“Because I have to lead you to the temple. I can’t be in the back.”

Sapnap urged his mule in front of Dream’s horse and the rider and equine duo started cantering toward something in the distance. 

“Well turn around and start leading then, because it looks like the jungle is gone now,” he shouted at his friend. 

Dream turned around in his saddle and hurried his steed after his friend. 

George sighed as he and his donkey were left in the dust. They couldn’t go any faster without snapping the lead to the llamas. 

As Sapnap and Dream walked across the transition from savanna to what used to be a jungle, their steed’s started pulling at the reins. Neither the horse nor donkey wanted to tread farther on the fresh ash of the jungle. Many of the larger trees were still smoking and Dream could still see red embers inside some of the trunks. Dream tried to urge his horse farther into the smoldering forest. 

The beast reared up on its back leg and dropped its rider onto the ground, stirring up a cloud of cinders. Sapnap slid off his donkey and grabbed the horse’s halter. After a few moments, the horse calmed down. They still seemed anxious, but weren’t about to lash out again. 

Sapnap glanced at Dream, making sure he was okay before attaching a lead to the horse’s halter, and another to the halter of his mule.

“Let’s leave these guys in the savanna. We can get the loot ourselves and bring it out here.” 

On the ashen ground, Dream coughed from the smoke and soot, but nodded at his friend and got to his feet. His dark armor was coated in the gray powder. 

They met George at the border of the destruction. He had already driven a stake into the ground and tied up the donkey and llamas. When he saw Sapnap emerging from the burnt forest the other two steeds and Dream on his tail, George waved his friend down.

He planted another fence post in the ground, and Sapnap immediately tied up his and Dream’s mounts as well. Once all the animals were secured, George and Sapnap turned to the person who had been in the area before. 

Gesturing towards the ashen landscape, George said, “I’m guessing it wasn’t like this the first time you were here?”

“Nope.” Dream shook his head, still coughing from the ash he’d inhaled. “There must be a lava pit around here that ignited it. The chests weren’t beside any plants though, so they should be fine. The temple should be right around here.” 

He set off into the jungle, with his friends trailing after him. A little way into the ashy wasteland, they split up to look for the building. After a few minutes, Sapnap yelled that he’d found something. 

Dream was the last of the trio to the front of the structure. The chests had been to the right of the entrance when Dream had left the jungle. Now, none of the chests were there and a crater and a source block of lava was in its place.

He stood looking at the destruction for a moment before saying, “You have to be fucking with me.” 

Sapnap snickered at his friend’s plight. “I’m guessing this also wasn’t here before.”

“NO!” Dream started pacing around the area outside the temple, simultaneously talking to his friends and trying to rationalize what had happened while he was gone. “There were two double chests full of netherite armor when I left! Something had to have-” 

Dream cut himself off. He spun around to face his friends. “My shadow did this.”

George barked out a laugh at the idea. “Your shadow? That’s just a mob-” 

Dream cut off George’s doubts with a shout.

“What else could have done this? Look!” Dream pointed at the lava and hole in the ground. “It tried to burn the armor with lava, but since netherite doesn’t burn, it had to use TNT to get rid of it. That's why the lava is floating above the hole.”

The lava source was in fact floating above the hole, where the ground level should have been if the terrain hadn’t been destroyed.

Sapnap blinked, taking in the damages in a new light. “Yeah, a player could do that. But there’s still no way a mob could.”

Dream took a deep breath, before explaining what he’d figured out about the shadow mobs through trial and error. 

“Every time you kill them, they get smarter and stronger. I killed my shadow about fifteen or twenty times, before it stopped fighting me and instead ran for it.”

“Really.” George didn’t sound convinced. “A preprogrammed mob figured how to make mine iron, make a bucket, and pick up lava. Then when that didn't work, it figured out how to kill creepers and make TNT.”

“Yes! When we were still in the temple, it figured out that axes disable shields without me doing it first.”

“Okay, okay.” Sapnap made calming motions with his hand as he walked into the dark structure. A few steps inside, he turned back around to face his friends. 

“Let’s stay that a mindless mob managed to both escape Dream, and destroy the chests, where the hell did you-” he pointed at Dream, “-find chests full of netherite in the first place, because you definitely didn't find it in this little shack.”

Dream paused for a second to think, before saying, “Give me a few minutes to do some stuff. Showing you will convince you more than me telling you.”

Sapnap considered it for a moment before nodding and sitting down on the edge of the dais. George joined him on the improvised seat as Dream sprinted out of the temple. After a few minutes, the fighter returned with a few armor stands in hand. 

Then he started pulling his armor off. “Sapnap, take your armor off too, and give it to George.” 

“Uhh, alright?” Sapnap sounded suspicious, but complied, handing over his armor along with his weapons to their british friend. 

Dream handed the armor stands to George, and then pointed at the platform in the very middle. 

“Put the armor stand there and then back up a bit.” He instructed. 

With that, Dream hopped off the raised platform and turned to watch. Beside him, Sapnap looked marginally worried. George gave Dream an odd look, but turned around and set the armor stand in the center of the dais. 

George took a step back as the armor stand glowed and then disappeared. He took another, more shaky step back as the shadow below his feet began to boil. A hand emerged from the silhouette, followed soon by the rest of the mob. Just like with Dream’s shadow, it was almost an exact replica of its summoner, except that it was colored in with gray and yellow. 

The new summoner stood in shock for a moment, only being shaken out of his stupor by the shadow swinging at him with its sword. After the initial surprise attack, George dealt with the mob easily. It didn’t even try to use its shield as George hacked through its health. 

A few moments later, the shadow died. Sapnap and George stood gaping at the pile of netherite armor and weapons on the ground.

“Dude!” Sapnap quickly fell to his knees, digging through the drops on the ground. He paused when his hands fell upon the hilt of a sword. Pulling it out of the pile, he inspected it for a moment before turning to George.

“You still have my sword, right?”

“”Yeah.” George nodded and after a moment, Sapnap’s sword materialized out of his inventory and into his palm. George handed it back to its rightful owner. 

Sapnap took a moment to compare the weapons before turning to face Dream. 

“Dude, what the hell?”

Dream simply shrugged and replied, “Everytime you kill your shadow, you get a duplicate of everything in your inventory.”

Sapnap moved the swords into his inventory and went back to scrounging through the loot, picking out his armor and putting it back on. “That’s so overpowered, you just need to kill your shadow a few times and you can have so much netherite.”

“Yeah,” Dream walked up and started strapping on his armor from the pile as well. “I had over two double chests of stuff. Also, the more times you summon your shadow, the stronger it gets. I killed mine about 10-ish times before it ran away.”

Sapnap stood up, armor glowing with enchantments. "Let's kill George's a few more times before we leave, so we aren't completely empty handed."

Dream nodded and handed the rest of his armor stands to his friend. "And if it gets too hard, we can help you kill it."

With his friends fully equipped and backing him up, George put another armor stand down on the dais. 

As soon as the mob emerged from George's shadow, Dream shot it with a crossbow bolt. The projectile went right through the shadow, and stuck in the wall behind it. Dream took a step back in surprise.

Sapnap's sword found its way through a gap in the shadow's armor and into its abdomen. Its head turned to look at its new attacker. The entity slammed into Sapnap with its shield. He was thrown off balance and fell to the ground, trapped behind his shield by the shadow's attacks.

Dream fired another crossbow bolt at the mob. It went straight through its chest, through Sapnap's shield, and into the wall beside his head. 

"DREAM! STOP THAT, WE CAN'T HURT IT." Sapnap yelled. "GEORGE, YOU HAVE TO KILL IT." 

Sapnap's yelling broke George out of his stupor. With the shadow's attention firmly centered on Sapnap, the british man killed it from behind without impedition.

Once it was dead, Sapnap slumped back against the blackstone wall. He pulled his helmet off and set it in his lap.

From his position on the floor, the warrior announced their newest findings. “Okay, new thing learned: only the player who summoned a shadow can hurt it.”

He jammed the helmet back on his head. Using the wall, Sapnap got back on his feet. 

“You good?” Dream’s voice was laced with concern. 

Sapnap nodded. “Yeah, that just threw for a bit.” He brandished his saber and tapped the point on the stone floor. “My sword went through it like nothing was there. It felt like I’d stabbed an empty suit of armor.”

“What, like, ‘Error 404: Shadow not found.” George posited. 

Sapnap laughed at the brit’s joke. “Kinda, yeah.”

Dream shifted his grip on his crossbow. Instead of the usual comfort a sword or loaded crossbow brought, his hotbar was now effectively full of dead weight. It was unsettling to have a problem he couldn’t fight his way through. He swapped the crossbow out for a sword. 

Turning to his friend he asked, “Do you want to go again, George? Me and Sapnap can draw attacks with shields, even if we can’t hurt it.”

George nodded, and grabbed an armor stand out of the new pile of stuff on the floor. 

They killed the shadow 3 more times before it stopped attacking Dream and Sapnap, and instead ran past George’s attacks to the entrance of the temple. 

It stopped at the threshold of the build. Stock still, it stared at the destroyed and ash covered jungle. George killed it with a crossbow bolt to the back. 

Dream’s couldn’t see its expression from behind, but from how similar the shadow was to George, it looked like the mob had stopped in shock because the destruction outside. 

He decided not to mention it. The three gathered all of the valuables laying on the ground, and Sapnap got rid of the float lava. Then, they started the trek back to the savanna where they’d left their steeds. 

As they approached, Dream noticed something missing. 

“Is my horse gone?” He asked. 

The llamas were milling around the area, with the leader of the caravan still tied up beside George’s donkey, but Sapnap’s mule was tied up on its own, instead of with Dream’s horse. 

“They couldn’t have gone far.” George said, as he started unloading items into his donkey’s saddlebags. “They probably snapped their lead and are just wandering around.”

“I’m gonna have to disagree with you, George. It looks like someone took the horse.” Sapnap was crouched on the ground beside the post that his donkey was tied to. “There’s a sign that says, ‘I’m sorry that I took your horse. I will take good care of them.”

Dream paused for a second, processing what Sapnap had said. Then, he shouted, “MY SHADOW STOLE MY HORSE.”

George let out a bark of laughter, while Sapnap fell on his ass, cackling.

“Can they even do that?” George asked, bewildered.

“Apparently!” Dream stormed over to where Sapnap was dying laughing in the grass to read the sign himself. It was exactly what Sapnap had read, word for word. 

Sapnap wiped tears out of his eyes, and through a fit of giggles said, “They also can write apparently.” 

Dream held his head in his hand and announced, “My shadow is a nightmare.”

“That can be his name, then.”

“What?” Dream turned to George in confusion.

“If he can steal a horse and apparently feel sorry for it, I think he counts as sentient, and he should have a name.” George shrugged and untied his animals from their post. 

“What are we going to call your’s then? 404?”

George considered it for a moment, then said, “Why not? I think that sounds like a cool name.”

Dream sighed. “Alright. Now, how am I gonna get home?”

Already on his mule, Sapnap trotted over and stood beside George’s donkey. “Hop on a llama and enjoy the ride, I guess.”

“ _Fiiiiiine._ ” Dream whined. “But I get to sit on the llama in the front.”

George snorted at his Dream’s annoyed tone. Sapnap laughed and said, “Alright, llama boy.”

Dream groaned and hopped on the back of one of the llamas. George pulled his donkey around and attacked a lead to the llama Dream was sitting on. The rest of the camelids formed a light behind the first. 

Sapnap walked his donkey so he was standing beside Dream. The warrior struck up a teasing conversation with his friend. 

Smiling at his friend’s banter, George clicked twice at his donkey and gave it a small squeeze with his legs, signaling it to go forward. After a moment, the equine started moving, and they’d begun the long journey back home.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr at skybiome!


End file.
